Point Of View / TGT has promptly jumped aboard the proverbial GTX 660 Ti overclocking train and their GTX 660 Ti Ultra Charged comes clocked at 1033MHz Base Clock and 1111MHz+ Boost Clock. Just like they did with the GTX 680 series, TGT used Low Leakage Selection chips. Naturally, the best chips excel in auto overclocking and the company says the GTX 660 Ti UC’s clocks go up to 1200MHz and even higher. The GTX 660 Ti Ultra Charged comes with 2GB of memory running at 1502MHz (6008MHz effectively).

TGT ran with reference cooling and we’ve seen that it’s good enough for cards running at 1033MHz or lower. However, we’re quite confident that the yet-to-be-released Beast version will come with more advanced cooling.

The GTX 660 Ti was supposed to be a budget card for gamers, but Nvidia set the price a bit too high in our opinion. The card rarely goes below €280 in Europe. The Ultra Charged goes for €298, but the good thing about it is its availability.

We’ll soon have the full review, running SLI too. So far we’ve seen that TGT was right when it said the GPU overclocks beyond 1200MHz and the maximum we measured was 1229MHz.

PoV/TGT bundles Borderlands 2 voucher with the card, meaning you’ll be able to download it when it comes out next month.

Following up on their GTX 680 Beast and Ultra Charged cards, Point of View / TGT decided to offer even more to the enthusiast bunch. So, if 2GB isn’t enough for you, you should know that PoV / TGT‘s offer now boasts the GTX 680 Ultra Charged with 4GB of memory. Note however that other than the memory, the card is identical to the GTX 680 Ultra Charged, meaning it packs a GPU factory overclocked by 105MHz. Those who crave more can always go for the GTX 680 Beast, whose GPU is factory overclocked by 157MHz.

The high clocks are not a problem thanks to the special triple slot cooling. TGT opted for hand selected low leakage chips in order to provide maximum performance. This ensures that auto-overclocks are maxed out and allows for superior overclocking headroom.

GTX 680 Ultra Charged comes with no special extras – you get a driver CD and a user manual. The box is tough, with a design along the lines of PoV/TGT’s earlier designs. We’d love to see a gift game with premium cards, but it seems like those days are gone.

GTX 680 Ultra Charged 4GB graphics card uses large but efficient cooling. We’ve had the chance to see it in action on the GTX 680 Beast and GTX 680 Ultra Charged 2GB cards and although it did a good cooling job, what we liked the most was its silent operation.

Seeing as how the Ultra Charged 4GB and Ultra Charged 2GB only differ in memory, we expect the cooler to repeat its earlier feat.

The fans are enclosed in a plastic mask, which is easily removable if you want to clean them. The cooler has different fans - the central fan is a 9cm one while the other two are 8cm in diameter. Size isn’t the only difference as the propellers were designed differently as well.

All three fans are connected via a single power connector, so Auto or manual RPM settings introduce changes on all three fans. The three fans make sure that every part of the heatsink is nice and cool.

The heatsink is split in two parts, with five heatpipes going through - two go towards the I/O panel, while three go in the opposite direction.

Heatpipes start on in the pretty large copper base. The base is massive, partly because the cooler is held in place only with four screws, which again go through the base. The design is pretty tough and we didn’t hear/see any vibration due to the number of fans. PoV / TGT used foam-like pads in two places between the heatsink and PCB, in order to ensure a proper and stable fit with no vibration noise.

PoV/TGT strapped the card with a heatspreader for memory and other low profile components on the front PCB. TGT’s backplate can be found in the back, although it doesn’t touch the memory so it’s questionable whether it improves cooling performance. However, it prevents the PCB from warping and definitely makes the card look better.

Reference GTX 680 cards draw power via two 6-pin connectors. Factory overclocked GTX 680 Ultra Charged has one 6-pin and one 8-pin power connector. Point of View / TGT uses five phase PWM design, one phase more than on the reference card.

GTX 680 Ultracharged comes with two dual-link DVI outs, but only one is analog VGA-out capable. The VGA-out requires using the bottom DVI – the one in line with HDMI and DisplayPort connectors. Nvidia made sure not to lag behind the competition so Kepler based cards can run up to four displays simultaneously.

The card has two SLI connectors, which means Quad GPU is possible. Note however that being three slots wide, finding room for four GTX 680 Ultra Charged cards will be a challenge.

We must admit that we had great expectations when it comes to overclocking, since TGT claims it used handpicked low leakage chips. Such chips do better with auto overclocking and tend to deliver higher maximum clocks, but should provide superior overclocking headroom as well.

Overclocking the memory was quite interesting, seeing as how the card has 4GB of memory. Naturally, doubling the number of memory chips doubles the chance of one of them turning out overclocking unfriendly, but luckily, all of them ran flawlessly, even after our 225MHz overclock (900MHz effectively).

We’ve noticed that the Power Target is a bit higher than on the reference design, but the voltage was left at reference values.

Before we move on, we should say that we left the fans in AUTO mode. The cooler ran so well that there was simply no need for it and the fans remained quiet even after our overclocking. Thermal throttling occurs at above 79°C, but the GTX 680 Ultra Charged never exceeded 72°C – that’s right, not even after overclocking.

Squeezing out maximum clocks, and in turn performance, from the GK104 requires a lot of attention. Below is a clear example of when to use the Power Target slider.

Once we overclocked the GPU by +70MHz, we noticed that auto-overclocking figures tend to oscillate somewhat, as you can see on the picture below. Quality GPU and cooling prevent more serious changes but we chose to stabilize the clocks by dragging the Power Target slider far right, allowing for maximum TDP. It worked and, as you can see from the second picture below, the GPU clock is nailed to 1269MHz.

The next photo proves that TGT really chose low leakage chips. Not even 100MHz extra turned out too much for this card. The maximum auto-overclock was 1289MHz, and as you can see from the picture below, the GPU ran at this clock the entire time.

We didn’t have much time on our hands and thus couldn’t check, but we’re pretty sure you could squeeze out a bit more from this card.

If you read the review in detail, you know that the cooling is excellent. First and foremost, it remained quiet when the card was working hard and it didn’t even flinch after our 100MHz (205MHz higher than reference) – golden silence. Note that such performance means we never utilized the cooler to its max, i.e. we didn’t speed up the fans.

Point of View / TGT found a perfect formula for cooling overclocked GTX 680 (GK104 GPUs). There was no secret recipe – massive cooling did the trick.

If you look at the cooling performance, it will be clear why TGT chose it to cool the fastest GTX 680s. The cooler was more than up to the task throughout our tests. We overclocked the core by another 100MHz (205MHz higher than reference) and the memory by 225MHz (900MHz effectively), but the cooler hardly noticed.

The cooling does however have one shortcoming – it takes up three slots. While you may find enough room for SLI or three-way SLI in most rigs, you can just about forget about fitting a Quad SLI setup.

Games don’t seem to notice the doubled memory, but this does not mean that future games won’t benefit from it. The good news is that 4GB of memory didn’t negatively affect GPU overclocking.

The GTX 680 Ultra Charged 4GB graphics card uses low leakage chips handpicked by TGT, and the overclock to 1211MHz (Max Boost clock 1289MHz) confirmed it. Note that the GTX 680 Beast’s Base GPU clock went up to 1223MHz, and we wouldn’t expect anything less from the Ultra Charged cards, provided you’re willing to put some work into it.

The 4GB version goes for €60 more than the 2GB one, but this is not only due to more memory – PoV/TGT’s handpicked low leakage chips provide excellent auto overclocking and further overclocking headroom, making the GTX 680 Ultra Charged 4GB pack one serious punch.

Hot on the heels of EVGA GTX 680 Classified 4GB review, we now got a chance to take Point of View /TGT’s GTX 680 Charged 4GB card out for a spin. As far as specs go, the cards are identical, but it’s quite clear that both companies are gunning for different segments.

The difference can be seen straight away – the PCB and cooling are definitely not from the same source. The GTX 680 Classified comes with dual-slot cooling, which allows for a Quad SLI setup, although its cooling is noticeably weaker than the Ultra Charged’s triple-slot cooling. On the other hand, the Classified boasts 14+3 VRM design, whereas the Charged has a 5+2 VRM design. Note however that EVGA aimed its card at overclockers, who will use LN2 and eVBotovervolting devices.The Ultra Charged was made for enthusiasts who crave maximum silence and performance straight out of the box. It’s worth noting that PoV/TGT has an even faster GTX 680 – the Beast, but it comes with 2GB of memory.

So, the GTX 680 Charged’s base GPU clock stands at 1111MHz (Boost clock at 1176MHz) while the memory is at 1502MHz (6008MHz effectively). The cooler is three slots wide, but its three fans do a great job and still keep the card quiet.

The preliminary tests we ran positioned the PoV/TGT GTX 680 Charged 4GB above the Classified 4GB. We’ll thoroughly examine just why is that so in the full review. It may be due to more uniform maximum boost clocks or simply striking lucky with the GPU. Still, if we’re to pick right now, we’d say it’s the GPU thermals, which are 7°C lower than on EVGA’s GTX 680 Classified.

The GTX 680 Charged 4GB currently goes for about €550, here, which is some €100 cheaper than the Classified goes for.

Point of View and its TGT overclocking and tuning team have just launched the Ultra Charged version of the GT 640 graphics card that features a high factory-overclock.

Based on Nvidia's 28nm GK107 Kepler GPU, it features 384 CUDA cores organized in 2 SMX clusters and paired up with a 128-bit memory interface. The reference design puts the GPU at 901MHz for the GPU and 1782MHz for either 1 or 2GB of DDR3 memory.

The POV/TGT GT 640 Ultra Charged on the other hand puts the GPU at an impressive 1006MHz while memory ends up factory overclocked to 2020MHz. The new GT 640 Ultra Charged graphics card still features a full height PCB and a single slot design.

The POV/TGT GT 640 Ultra Charged is, according to Point of View, available immediatelly with a suggested retail/e-tail price set at €115 incl. VAT.

After being granted the honor of testing one of the best GTX 680 graphics cards around – Pont of View/TGT’s GTX 680 Ultra Charged, we must admit we pounced on the chance to put the company’s GTX 670 Ultra Charged through its paces.

GTX 680 Ultra Charged card got a special, three slots wide cooler with three fans, which was a great move. The thermals and noise levels ended up quite low, which is not a small feat considering that the GPU was overclocked.

GTX 670 Ultra Charged survived the trip, but it doesn’t look like it was an easy one. Namely, the box was pretty beaten up and squashed at one end.

The card has two dual-link DVIs, one standard HDMI and a DisplayPort connector. There are no extra video dongles in the box.

In the box you’ll find: Quick Installation Guide Driver CD

Point of View / TGT GTX 670 Ultra Charged graphics card has dual slot air cooling. It’s 24cm long. The only physical difference we noticed between the Ultra Charged’s cooler and Nvidia’s reference design is the plastic with Pont of View/TGT logo.

Below you can see Nvidia’s reference GTX 670 2GB graphics.

Nvidia GTX 670 2GB

Good thing about reference cooling is that it pushes air out of the case. Naturally, it won’t make a big difference if you have a single GTX 670, but SLI and three-way SLI setups will really love this when they get hot.

Underneath the shroud is a heatsink with a copper base. All the power components were moved towards the I/O panel and the blower style fan is at the opposite end.

The fan is fixed to a plastic part that can be removed. GTX 670’s PCB is only 17.2cm long.

GTX 670 Ultra Charged is powered via two 6-pin power connectors, just like the reference GTX 670 card. The reference GTX 670’s TDP is at 170W, but the Ultra Charged’s clocks mean that we can expect higher TDP.

The card comes with 2GB of memory in eight memory modules. The modules are distributed in a way where each next module is on the opposite side of the PCB.

Point of View / TGT GTX 670 Ultra Charged is based on reference design but is factory overclocked. In fact, only the GPU runs at higher clocks while the memory was left at reference values.

TGT has a meticulous selection of chips for its cards, since their factory overclocks require the best chips, the kind that has a lower leakage and higher average Boost clock. Below is a graph that shows Boost clocks without any additional OC, just the GPU Boost technology in action.

Overclocking

Maximum overclocking of the base GPU clock on our GTX 670 UC card ended up at 1035MHz. Boost was running even after our overclock and we recorded clocks up to 1242MHz. We overclocked the memory by 150MHz (600MHz GDDR5 effectively). We’re convinced that TGT’s effort in picking the best chips would’ve shown in overclocking, but reference cooling meant that we could not squeeze out the maximum.

The overclock we did isn’t spectacular, but it was enough for PoV/TGT GTX 670 Ultra Charged to score higher than the reference GTX 680.

Thermals and Noise

GPU temperatures were within normal values with PoV/TGT’s overclock – we didn’t see it exceed 84ºC. The fan wasn’t too loud but you’ll hear it good in longer gaming sessions, when the card and case get hot. It’s louder than the reference fan, but that’s to be expected with a factory overclock. You’ll hear the fan a bit in idle mode as well, but it’s far from what we’d call loud.

Power Consumption

So far, PoV/TGT GTX 670 Ultra Charged is the fastest model by this Nvidia’s partner. We still haven’t seen the GTX 670 Beast, but we suppose that if there is one, TGT will probably opt for a better cooling solution than the reference one. In fact, the cooler is the only thing we’d change on the GTX 670 Ultra Charged. Namely, the reference cooler is working pretty hard, since it has to cool the GPU that runs at almost 1GHz. As a result, we have a card that’s noisier than the reference one. The fan can be heard well and is one inch from being called loud.

As far as performance goes, the GTX 670 Ultra Charged is a card you’ll definitely love. Gaming at high resolutions was pleasant. In fact, at times we felt as if it was GTX 680 in our rig. Just to make sure we’re not imagining things, we overclocked the GPU and memory, which helped the GTX 670 UC actually outpace the GTX 680.

We checked out EU prices and saw that GTX 670 availability is quite good, especially in German region. However, the high demand brought about varied pricing and the card starts at €340 all the way up to €430. Point of View / TGT dangerously approached this limit and its card is priced at €418.

PoV/TGT GTX 670 Ultra Charged’s results clearly show that gamers will love this card, although they may not feel the same about pricing. It may be wisest to wait a bit for availability and AMD to bring about Nvidia’s price adjustments, but if you’re impatient to get your mitts on this card, you definitely won’t make a mistake.

It's a well known fact that the most popular graphics cards series usually had a few models that stood out and our today’s guest is Point of View/TGT’s GTX 680 Ultra Charged. The card comes with a hefty GPU overclock and proprietary design featuring both an improved power supply and triple fan cooling.

Geforce GTX 680 cards are based on GK104 graphics chip that is part of Nvidia’s Kepler architecture. Reference clocks for GTX 680 cards are at 1006MHz GPU, which is already quite high, but not maxed out. Thankfully, end users will benefit from this because now we see partners competing in who will make a meaner GTX 680. From what we’ve seen, running the GPU beyond 1100MHz would require better cooling than on the reference card. Of course, not all chips are made equal so it’s important to pick out the chips that can handle such clocks.

GTX 680 Ultra Charged comes with a 1110MHz GPU and it’s pretty much the maximum you can get with air cooling. Ultra Charged cards come with handpicked chips with low leakage and should enable for improved auto-overclocking with GPU Boost technology.

GTX 680 Ultracharged comes with no special extras – you get a driver CD and a user manual. The box is tough, with a design along the lines of PoV/TGT’s earlier designs.

The cooler with three fans doesn’t only seem large – it actually is quite chunky and will take up three slots. We’ve already seen a few non –reference coolers for GTX 680 and they were wider than two slots, so we weren’t surprised by PoV/TGT’s move. The GPU comes overclocked by 104MHz and such feats require adequate cooling.

The following picture shows that the cooler is two slots wide with fans off.

The central fan is a 9cm one while the other two are 8cm. Size isn’t the only difference as the propellers were designed differently.

There are no signs or specs on the fans but we can confirm they do the job well. They only get loud beyond 65% RPM, but fan speed never exceeded 50% RPM, i.e. they were quiet.

PoV/TGT probably could’ve used the metal plate above the central fan (picture below) for a logo or something, but it’s empty for now.

It seems to us that the plate is there simply to cover the spot where heatsink splits, see below.

The heatsink has five heatpipes – tree go towards the end and two towards the I/O panel.

PoV/TGT strapped the card with a heatspreader for memory and other low profile components on the PCB.

Reference GTX 680 cards draw power via two 6-pin connectors. Factory overclocked GTX 680 Ultra Charged has one 6-pin and one 8-pin power connector. Point of View / TGT uses five phase PWM design, one phase more than on the reference card.

GTX 680 Ultracharged comes with two dual-link DVI outs, but only one is analog VGA-out capable. Strangely enough, PoV/TGT forgot to mention that VGA-out requires using the bottom DVI – the one in line with HDMI and DisplayPort connectors. Nvidia made sure not to lag behind the competition so Kepler based cards can run up to four displays simultaneously.

The card has two SLI connectors, which means Quad GPU is possible.

A metal plate was mounted on the back of the card. We must admit that it really does make it look better.

GPU Boost is an important factor in the entire GTX 600 series, since it controls how much and when to auto-overclock the GPU. Below you’ll find GPU clocks we got playing Metro 2033 at 2560x1600. Base clock is the guaranteed clock while Boost and all other clocks depend on whether the GPU is working too hard, whether thermals are fine and whether consumption is optimal. GPU Boost is good because the chip is used to the max and users don’t have to mess with overclocking since the card is already doing it itself.

TGT handpicked only the best chips with low leakage, which should result in top auto-overclocking results. Thermals are also important and GTX 680 Ultra Charged’s cooler keeps GPU temperatures below 70°C – as much as 10°C lower than on the reference GTX 680.

GTX 680 Ultra Charged’s Base clock is 1110MHz, Boost is 1176 MHz. As you can see, clocks are up to 1228MHz. It appears as if TGT managed to nail GPU Boost to the highest possible auto-OC clock.

The following graph shows GPU clocks on another GTX 680, whose GPU Boost clocks change more often. Such a card is representative of pretty much all the GTX 680s we’ve tested.

We measured one of the results in the table by downclocking Ultra Charged’s GPU and overlocking the memory, so as to match the GTX 680 Signature.

Pov/TGT chose not to overclock GTX Ultra Charged’s memory. The reason is that the overclock would not have resulted in a significant performance increase. The GTX 680 has plenty of bandwidth so faster memory would only boost consumption. Although Crysis 2 suggested that this is indeed the case, AvP and Metro 2033 sti benefited from the memory overclock.

Most factory overclocked GTX 680 cards come with memory at about 1550MHz. We used EVGA’s GTX 680 SC Signature as our reference. In the tables below, you can see how results woul've looked had TGT overclocked the memory as well.

AvP scored 2.7 percent batter after the memory overclock, while Metro 2033 sped up by 2.6 percent. Looking at the results, it’s clear that overclocking the memory does affect results. While we’d rather have overclocked memory on GTX 680 Ultra Charged cards, it’s not a problem since you can easily overclock it by a minimum of 100MHz.

GTX 680 Ultra Charged is factory overclocked and that GPU clock is 1110MH. Memory clock is reference, which means that the memory runs at 1502MHz (6008MHz effectively). We overclocked the memory by 150MHz and ran with it since it worked well. However, we focused more on GPU overclocking.

The photo below shows PrecisionX, which says that the Ultra Charged’s Power Target value is factory boosted.

PowerTarget value can be additionally boosted by 12 percent. We could boost reference GTX 680 cards’ PowerTarget by 32 percent, which suggests that the Ultra Charged’s PowerTarget is factory set at 120 percent. Once the GPU is under load, voltage goes up to 1175mV, same like the reference GTX 680.

GTX 680 Ultra Charged’s cooler has three fans and runs great. Auto mode results in GPU temperatures up to 66°C. This is great considering that the GPU is up from reference 1006MHz to 1110MHz. Even better news is that the cooler is quiet when the card is under load as well. Note that reference cards run at about 80°C.

One can’t help but wonder about overclocking performance when the fans are sped up, especially since the cooler already runs great at 50 percent RPM. Unfortunately, increasing fan speed couldn’t help us get better overclocking results.

Running at 1180MHz, Unigine Heaven tended to crash at 100 percent RPM, but not when the fans are at 61 percent. We didn’t have enough time or adequate equipment to find the root of the problem. We thought that faster speed negatively affects cooling of PCB components or that the fans simply draw too much power.

Thankfully, there’s no need to worry – auto fan speed won’t exceed 50 percent RPM and the fans are quiet. Maximum GPU Clock Offset is +70MHz, but after some time you’ll notice some artifacts. The GPU was stable and ran happily at about 1160MHz.

Consumption is not an issue since Nvidia did a good job designing its Kepler cards. Ultra Charged consumes about 20W more than the reference card, but the GPU runs 10 percent faster.

Point of View / TGT launched its first overclocked GTX 680 and called it Ultra Charged (model TGT-680-A1-2-UC). The card brings several improvements compared to the reference GTX 680. We’ll start with what may be the most important detail for most users – special triple-fan cooling. In idle mode, the cooler is almost inaudible and it remains quiet under load as well. The only downside would be the fact that it takes up three slots, but the silence is worth it. Most overclocked GTX 680 cards get loud when the GPU is working hard, but not GTX 680 Ultra Charged.

Another important thing that the Ultra Charged’s GPU runs at 1110MHz. Only a few GTX 680 cards boast GPU clock of over 1100MHz. In order to supply the card with enough power, TGT threw in a 6-pin and an 8-pin connectors and added another phase for the GPU.

GPU comes overclocked but the memory runs at reference clocks. Although the memory isn’t difficult to overclock, we’d still rather see TGT do it, because the card would outpace almost all the GTX 680s around.

GTX 680 Ultra Charged is currently listed some €90 higher than reference cards go for, here. This may be considered a bit steep and we believe that a price tag some €60 over the reference card sounds much more reasonable. If you’re looking for silent cooling, then this card is made for you. If you want an overclocked GTX 680, then again the answer is Ultra Charged. Furthermore, TGT made a sweet selection of chips, where only low leakage GPUs ended up on the Ultra Charged, where higher GPU boost clocks are a direct result.

Point of View and its TGT overclocking team have announced its own GTX 680 graphics cards. It appears that, in addition to the reference clocked GTX 680, POV's TGT team is preparing four more cards that will feature some sort of factory overclock.

There is nothing new to write about the reference design card as these all use the same Nvidia dual-slot blower-fan cooler and work at 1006MHz for the GPU with 1058MHz Boost and have 2GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 6008MHz and paired up with a 256-bit memory interface.

The more interesting are the POV/TGT factory overclocked cards and according to our favorite price-search engine, POV/TGT will have four different cards. The lineup starts with the POV/TGT GTX 680 Performance Boost card, that will most likely feature a heftier GPU boost. We are guessing here as POV/TGT haven't officially announced these cards.

The next one is the TGT Charged Edition followed by the TGT Ultra Charged Edition. Both should feature a hefty factory overclock. Unfortunately, every factory OC BIOS now has to be certified by Nvidia so we aren't sure when will these actually be available.

The last but not least is the POV/TGT GTX 680 Beast Watercooled Edition. We at least managed to score a picture of this card but specs are still unknown. We are guessing that POV/TGT are still tweaking it to find a best possible stable factory overclock. The card is paired up with Aquacomputer's Aquagrafx full cover waterblock that weill certainly do a good job in cooling this card. We also managed to find out that the official suggested retail price is expected to be somewhere around €650 including VAT.

The reference Point of View GTX 680 is already available in Europe with a lowest price of €485,82 at Ditech.de.

Point of View / TGT GTX 580 3GB Ultra Charged is specially designed high performance graphics card for enthusiast who like to play games at very high quality settings and resolutions (above 1920) with the highest antialiasing allowed.

Just to refresh your memory – reference Geforce GTX 580 cards come with 1.5GB of memory, which disappointed many enthusiasts. Naturally, whether average users need more than 1.5GB on a GTX 580 is debatable. Most apps and games don't really need massive video buffers but the fact that several Nvidia's partners have launched 3GB versions shows that there indeed is demand for such cards.

Point of View not only doubled the memory capacity of GTX 580 but tapped into TGT overclocking team's experience as well. The result is the fastest GTX 580 3GB card on the market. The core ticks at 841MHz (reference clock is 772MHz) and the memory was overclocked from 4008MHz to 4104MHz.

Such high clocks mean increased temperatures as well and we expected to see PoV/TGT strapping the card with some kind of special cooling. However, once we opened the box we saw Nvidia's reference cooler.

That's not to say that reference cooling doesn't do a good job on reference GTX 580 cards; it works great but gets quite loud at higher overclocks. We'll soon see whether it can handle PoV/TGT GTX 580 3GB Ultra Charged.

The card is powered via one 6-pin and one 8-pin connector.

Video outs are standard as well – two dual-link DVIs and one mini-HDMI (mini-HDMI-to-HDMI dongle is included). Air outlets above the video outs are wider than usual in order to let hot air out.

The following photo shows that memory modules are all on the GPU side of the PCB. There are 12 memory modules in total, just like on reference cards. However, instead of using 128MB modules with 32x32 array design, the company used 256MB modules with a denser 64x32 internal layout.

For our testing, we used standard game settings and one display with maximum resolution 2560x1600.

Aliens vs. Predator

The GTX 580 3GB UC kartica outran the refefence version by 6%. Although you can't tell from the results, GTX 580 3GB UC provided a much smoother gaming experience at the highest tested resolution, most likely because minimum fps was better than on the reference card.

We've noticed that the video buffer on our GTX 580 was almost always topped out, whereas the GTX 580 3GB UC had memory to spare. You can see that on the GPUz screens below.

We noticed that the game requires more than 2GB on many occasions (up to 2268MB), which is more than reference GTX 580 cards can offer.

GTX 580 1.5GB

GTX 580 3GB UC

Dirt 2

The GTX 580 3GB UC card outperformed the reference GTX 580 by up to 8%. Dirt 2 is playable on slower cards with 1GB of memory, so we didn't notice any gaming difference between the reference GTX 580 and GTX 580 3GB UC.

As you can see, 3GB of memory is not a prerequisite for playing Dirt 2 at 2560x1600.

GTX 580 1.5GB

GTX 580 3GB UC

Metro 2033

The GTX 580 3GB UC only showed minimum advantage over the reference GTX 580, up to 3% in total. 2560x1600 with 16AF and 4xAA requires more than 1GB but although we had 3GB, GPU limitations were at fault for low results.

As you can see, Metro 2033 used up only 1.8GB of memory on our GTX 580 3GB UC.

GTX 580 1.5GB

GTX 580 3GB UC

Crysis 2

We took the new Crysis 2 DX11 with high texture packages out for a spin, but the game used only 1.7GB of memory. Playing Crysis 2 at 2560x1600 with all effects on was much better with GTX 580 3GB UC than with the reference card.

GTX 580 1.5GB

GTX 580 3GB UC

3DMark 2011 and Unigine Heaven

3DMark 2011 and Unigine Heaven reported that the GTX 580 3GB Ultra Charged is up to 8% faster than the reference GTX 580.

Overclocking, noise and thermals

The GTX 580 3GB Ultra Charged comes factory overclocked to 841MHz. TGT handpicked the crème of the crop GPUs or these cards but the cooling is not adequate for additional overclocking.

The GTX 580 3GB Ultra Charged uses reference cooling that has a tough time tackling such high clocks. GPU temperatures can hit 98°C, which is about 10°C higher than on reference cards. Such temperatures coupled with fan noise discouraged us from attempting further overclocking.

Conclusion

We tested several games at 2560x1600 but we needed more than 1.5GB of memory only in rare cases. Although 3GB of memory sounds enticing, anyone who's less than hard-core gamer would do just fine with the reference GTX 580 1.5GB version. PoV/TGT aren't targeting uninformed customers who consider RAM to be the measure of GPU power, but rather informed gamers who like to know that they will never be limited by available memory. If you’re looking to use the card for scientific purposes and tap into CUDA, then you’ll probably love the 3GB version – it will allow for twice as much data in the memory.

Several Nvidia's partners have already launched 3GB versions of the GTX 580, which means that the demand exists. While there are only few games that can put the 3GB to use, we're hoping to see more by the year's end.

Our testing revealed that 2560x1600 gaming will suffer from GPU speed limitations more often than memory limitations. The 3GB version is also useful for SLI. If you use two reference GTX 580 cards with SLI, you have 2x 1.5GB and not 1x 3.0GB. With 2x 3.0GB versions, you have both the performance and the memory to support very high resolutions. Of course the 3GB version is also very useful for games which support multiple monitors.

Investing in future is not always an easy decision to make, especially if the ‘future’ costs €540 here. PoV/TGT GTX 580 UC card with 1.5GB goes for about €90 less.

We would've liked a better cooler on the GTX 580 3GB Ultra Charged. Compared to the reference version, our today's test sample was much louder and hotter.

The card packs a nice punch, there's no doubt about it, but unless you're an enthusiast or know exactly why you need 3GB of memory, we'd recommend you to stick with the more affordable, reference GTX 580 with 1.5GB of memory.

GTX 580 3GB Ultra Charged is specially designed high performance graphics card for enthusiast who like to play games at very high resolutions (above 1920) with highest antialiasing enabled. We got the card from Point of View / TGT and we want to share our first impressions with our readers.

Great thing about this card, apart from the fact that you can put a tremendous amount of data into the video buffer, is that the GPU performance is brought to the next level thanks to factory overclocking, which boosted GPU frequency from reference 772MHz to 841MHz.

GTX 580 3GB Ultra Charged

It is not easy to show highlights of this card using only standard game settings or playing games on standard resolutions. TGT is not targeting uninformed customers, who consider massive RAM a sign of GPU power, but the informed gamers who like to know that they'll never be let down by available graphics RAM.

We played Aliens vs Predator game at resolution 2560x1600 using 32 CSAA and 16AF. From the picture below, you can see that the used memory exceeded 1.5GB, which is actually a limitation with standard GTX 580.

We will also try to find out how GTX 580 3GB UC copes with other games and downsampling (a technique used to fool the application to use a resolution higher than the screen resolution).

GTX 580 3GB Ultra Charged

The same game played with standard GTX 580 1.5GB card at the same resolution and settings will run into memory limitations, as you can see from the picture below.

GTX 580 1.5GB

As you can see from the picture below, GTX 580 3GB Ultra Charged card is equipped with reference cooling, which can be very loud during gaming. It somehow manages to keep the GPU temperature on the safe side during intensive gaming. We measured 10 Celsius more compared to the reference card.

Doubling the memory capacity of the standard GTX 580 gives enthusiasts more freedom, and we should not forget that this card sports factory overclocing. Stay tuned as we'll have the full review soon.

With the company’s launch of Geforce GTX 560, Nvidia expanded its performance segment offer quite nicely. The GTX 560 can be found at €150, while the GTX 560 Ti is available for €30 more, here.

Both cards were classified as so called ‘gamers’ sweet spot’, meaning that gamers on average budgets will love it and should be pleased with the performance offered. Optimum gaming resolution is 1680x1050, although 1920x1080 is possible as well, albeit after sacrificing some detail settings.

Thankfully, there’s always the option to overclock the card and allow for smooth 1920x1080 gaming ad Point of View/TGT did exactly that. In fact, PoV/TGT pushed the GTX 560 Ultra Charged Edition’s GPU from reference 810MHz to as high as 900MHz.

GTX 560 cards are built around the GF114 GPU. Compared to the GF114 on GTX 560 Ti cards, the GTX 560’s GF114 comes with one Shader-cluster less. By disabling the Shader-cluster, GTX 560 practically got the same specs as the GTX 460 (GF104): 336 shaders or CUDA processors, 32 ROPs, 56 TMUs and 256-bit memory interface. Hardware wise, it’s the same configuration but the GTX 560’s GPU is 135MHz faster and its memory is faster by 100MHz (400MHz effectively) than GTX 460’s.

Thanks to the improved GPU design, Nvidia could clock the GF114 much higher than GTX 460’s clocks, all the while keeping consumption at the same level.

Performance wise, the GTX 560 is somewhere between the GTX 460 and GTX 560 Ti, leaning more towards the latter.

The GTX 560 Ultra Charged’s packaging is similar to that of GTX 560 Ti Ultra Charged card. Nvidia really made the design part easy for its partners, as all they had to do was erase the 'Ti's and ship them away.

The card is named TGT-560-A1-1-UC and, as you can see, is quite a charmer. PoV/TGT used a black PCB and a black dual-slot cooler.

GTX 560 UC is 21cm long, which is 2cm shorter than the GTX 560 Ti.

The card comes with two 6-pin power connectors.

Although the connectors are on the far end of the card, the card itself is short and mounting it in smaller cases will not be a problem.

PoV / TGT GTX 560 Ultra Charged has one dual-link DVI, one standard HDMI and VGA connector. The card's cooler is pretty quiet considering the card is overclocked from 810MHz to 900MHz. We're talking about a classic cooler with a circular heatsink and two heatpipes. The memory is cooled by air from the fan only.

PCB looks pretty neat and tidy. The memory is placed on the GPU side of the PCB. The memory chips come from Samsung (model number K4G10325FE-HC04) and are specified to run at 1250MHz (5000 MHz GDDR5 effectively).

Top of the PCB has an aluminum bar that's used for improved heat dissipation.

We managed to push the GPU to 970MHz, which is pretty much a maximum you can squeeze out from the GF114 on GTX 560 cards.

Although we didn't manage to hit constantly stable 1GHz, GTX 560 Ultra Charged allowed us to enjoy the following.

Afterburner recorded an interesting thing -- after the instability caused by the 1000MHz clock, the card downclocked to 900MHz. The app we were running at the time didn't crash.

Thermals and Noise

You'll hear the fan during gaming but it is pretty quiet when idle. Pushing the card to 970MHz resulted in temperatures up to 92°C, whereas 900MHz operation saw temperatures up to 86°C.

Today we tested Point of View/TGT’s GTX 560 Ultra Charged graphics card. We’ve grown to expect the company to come up with some nice overclocks, and today was no exception. Nvidia’s partners pounced on the chance to put the GF114’s overclock potential to good use and although you’ll find some overclocked by only 12MHz, PoV/TGT’s GTX 560 Ultra Charged boasts a 90MHz overclock.

A reference clocked Geforce GTX 560 allows for smooth 1680x1050 gaming, whereas 1920x1080 will depend on the game and graphics settings. Thankfully, overclocked GTX 560 Ultra Charged card is up to 9% faster than the reference GTX 560 and that will allow for smooth 1920x1080 gaming.

Overclocking-friendly GTX 460, GT 560 and GTX 560 Ti cards made the €120-200 offer nicely filled out and there are plenty of cards to choose from. It seems like there are more than 100 different cards derived from the aforementioned cards.

As we said, Point of View/TGT GTX 560 Ultra Charged is one of the fastest GTX 560 cards around. Point of View/TGT 560 Ultra Charged currently goes for €184, which is a few euro higher than the GTX 560 Ti. While the card is undoubtedly quality, we must say that the pricing should have been at least a bit lower in order to compete with the GTX 560 Ti.